The fifth episode of HISTORY’s Zodiac Killer documentary revealed an alleged solution of the infamous Z340 cryptogram. Does it make sense?

The fifth and last episode of HISTORY’s documentary The Hunt For The Zodiac Killer has aired (check here for a video). Titled “The Code Is Cracked” this last part of the series promised to reveal the solution of one of the world’s most famous crypto mysteries: the Zodiac Killer’s second encrypted message, also known as Z340.

The solution (?)

It was Craig Bauer, crypto history expert, book author, and member of the expert team shown in the series, who presented the alleged solution. The first part of it is a decryption of the first eight lines of Z340. Here it is:

1) There are too many variables in the solution, it seems too subjective, both in method of “decipherment” and results given.

2) It leaves out some cipher characters, and adds plain text characters, without explanation other than making the plaintext a bit closer to meaningful.

3) Much of the plaintext has little meaning anyway, after this is done.

4) The given substitutions don’t work with characters in lines after line 8. But rather than being because the rest is gibberish, I think it may be because the substitutions are incorrect.

5) The last “O” and “N” in “NICKSON” replace the Zodiac symbol and “Z” in “[symbol] ZODAIK”. But it seems “ZODAIK” is one thing probably intended by the killer.

Other blog readers, including George Lasry, Bill Briere, and Nils Kopal have stated serious doubts about this solution, too. George Lasry published a very good analysis in the discussion forum of my last article (comments #19-21), which makes clear that Craig’s cleartext is far from conclusive.

Ed Scheidt’s contribution

Of course, Craig showed his solution to his fellow members of the documentary’s crypto team (including Kevin Knight and Dave Oranchak). Surprisingly, all of them confirmed that his finding made sense.

In some of my articles about this documentary I mentioned that at the NSA Symposium on Cryptologic History a well-known crypto expert mentioned Craig Bauer’s solution and said that in his view it was correct. This crypto expert was Ed Scheidt, a retired chairman of the CIA crypto unit, best known for having designed the cryptographic systems used in the famous Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Ed didn’t take part in the symposium itlself, but he was present at the Kryptos dinner organised by Elonka Dunin on the day after. The following picture was taken at this dinner:

What I didn’t know is that Ed Scheidt had an appreance in the last episode of the documentary. Craig Bauer showed him his solution, he confirmed that it made sense.

My conclusion

So, in the end, we have four renowned codebreaking experts and a few more intelligent people who all have stated that an obviously wrong solution of a famous crypto mystery is correct. How shall we make sense of this?

Here’s my answer. In my view, HISTORY’s Zodiac Killer documentary should be regarded as semi-fictional. It tells the story of a fictional investigation of a real crime. The members of the investigation team (including crypto experts Craig Bauer, Kevin Knight, David Oranchak, and Ed Scheidt) served as actors. The things they found out are real, but far from new. Their super computer Carmel is a fictionalized version of some analysis software.

@Klaus
You summarized the story pretty well. Great achievement engaging bigger audiences on the topic of the Zodiac and other historical ciphers, and a doubtful solution despite its intuitive power and striking originality.

@thomas
The issue is that you can’t extract a definitive key from the proposed plaintext. Some homophone mappings are consistent (or the homophone is used only once) but many are not. I am presenting the most likely key based on majority voting. But when trying to apply that key, you get a very high number of errors.
You can find more info in the previous blog entry. Look for comments 19 and 21. Let me know if you are still missing anything from there.

Klaus, your assessment of this whole enterprise was very measured and diplomatic. You’re an excellent blog host!

One thing, though, that bothers me is the idea that this show brought positive attention to cryptology. I don’t think it did. Our craft has been reduced to astrology and child’s play. Still, I do think that the damage that’s been done can be turned around. That will require all of us to call out the fakes when we see them and not allow our history to be rewritten by entertainers, charlatans, and profiteers.

I hope everyone here reads it. Well, it’s too late for Craig, I guess. And he’s certainly not lurking here at all, cuz he would have jumped in to defend the solution by now, so he won’t see the paper, anyway. *crickets*

Before passing the solution on to the FBI, History narrated its meticulous process of verifying Craig’s results. The patter was straight out of a magician’s handbook.

A million or so hypnotized viewers believe they saw Craig’s solution vetted over and over again on almost-live television. I could almost hear the audience screaming: “No, it’s okay, you’ve done enough already! How much more proof could the authorities possibly need?”

Real investigators, cryptanalysts, and historians find the show’s methods manipulative and an insult to their professions.

The product of cryptanalysis does not vary based on hopes and dreams, profit and agendas. It is not a game of Scrabble. It is not a magic trick. It is not a creative-writing exercise.

Karga Seven has made a mockery of what cryptanalysts really do. History and its duped deputies have represented our profession as one that involves twirling pencils, using ESP, looking astonished at every little development, and waiting around all day for supercomputers to solve simple substitution ciphers for us. Not one shred of actual cryptanalysis was shown in the series. (Or did I miss something?)

Real-life code breakers do important and sometimes excruciatingly difficult work that most people will never fully appreciate. They are serious mathematicians, linguists, and computer scientists. These dedicated professionals know that their successes and failures have real-life consequences. They do not seek attention; they serve in silence. They are not magicians, actors, and circus side shows. Their tool kits do not include magic mushrooms and Ouija boards. They do not dig through ciphertext looking for “interesting viewpoints.”

Granted, not all ciphers are a matter of life and death. I’ve been working on a recreational cryptogram called K-4 for many years. Newcomers and other amateurs frequently claim to have solved it. Many of their solutions sound similar to Craig’s attempt on Z-340: excessive variables and inconsistencies, subjectivity, shoehorning stuff in when it doesn’t quite fit, stilted language, working in bits of expected phrases that “should” be in there somewhere, and even getting inside the originator’s head and “seeing words.” These are not the tools and marks of William Friedman’s revered science of cryptanalysis.

Kevin and “his team of top code breakers,” including Carmel, failed to produce a solution that would pass even the most superficial scrutiny of any competent amateur cryptanalyst. And everyone in that room had to have known that. Including Carmel.

The dissection of the proposal, by George Lasry (which you link to), has been very informative to me. So has the Ryan Garlick paper linked to by Thomas and Bill, above. I see that like the Voynich field, the Zodiac investigation has had similar enthusiastic but incorrect attempts. Ryan and I, it seems, have had some parallel observations, as can be seen in my post linked at the top of my comment. I think the ideas represented by all of us can be applied as “self checks” to any cipher, and many other seemingly intractable problems, also.

And I think this whole experience is a valuable one, for the participants, the viewers, anyone seeking an answer to a difficult problem like this. And especially for anyone being pressured by big flashy concerns like the History and the Discovery Channels… I know that pressure, myself, from various productions… they often try to compel you to be more showman than scientist, because scientists don’t sell shampoo. The silver lining you mention, that more people will find out about, and work on this problem now, is possible… as long as any newcomers can separate the wheat from the chaff. Or the better chaff from the worse chaff, if that is the case.

Do these shows help or hurt the investigations into the genuine mysteries they present? Maybe someone who has seen this show will now solve the Z340. Or will the average viewer walk away, erroneously thinking the problem is already solved? Time will tell.

Craig’s defense (linked to in my previous comment) tracks roughly with my prior understanding of his solution attempt. This was my own take, posted elsewhere a few days before he released his explanation:

>>
The following tips may help everyone understand Craig Bauer’s process and bring a little ray of encouragement to those who still dream.

Only the decryption steps for this type of cryptogram are shown below. You’ll need to reverse them to encrypt. And the key, of course, is sort of generated and compiled along the way.

1. Start with a guess at an opening phrase, such as “Here it is” or whatever. In Z-340-type cryptograms, you’ll find that the first few letters are usually not enciphered, so as to provide a hint to the solver.

2. Fill in your initial letter recoveries throughout the rest of the cryptogram. If nothing promising appears, start over with a new guess. You are allowed to make as many guesses as you want, but you must have at least one good letter to be able to assume that a guess is correct. If a really good word that you need is mostly right, you also may add or remove a letter to fix it. This step is much easier if you can psychologically get inside the author’s head; e.g., you might be able to determine that he or she was a bad speller. (Novice solvers: At this stage, you may also use a handful of wildcards, but don’t burn through them too quickly. You might need them later.)

3. While immersing yourself in the encrypter’s thoughts, you may start “seeing words.” Open your eyes occasionally to write these down, before you forget them. Be bold. This is, after all, a monoalphabetic, uniliteralish, monographic-esque, pushmi-pullyu-homophonic substitution (MUMPPS) cipher, which is just a fancy way of saying that you don’t need any military training to use it. Another great thing about the MUMPPS cipher is that it does not suffer from the one-way limitation of Z-408’s homophonic system, in which the mapping of letters to symbols was flexible in only one direction.

4. At some point, it will become difficult to extend the plaintext recoveries any further. Don’t give up! Relax the rules a little, if necessary. Allow yourself to borrow a sensible vowel here and there, if that’s what it takes to accomplish the mission. Once you are absolutely sure that nothing more can be found, that’s when you’ll know that you’ve hit the null section, which you can ignore from that point forward, mostly.

5. Skip down to the bottom of the ciphertext. Since we are looking for a signature here, it will not be encrypted the same as the rest of the message. Look for a name that consists of about a quarter to a third plaintext, plus another quarter to a third where the symbols sort of resemble their plaintext counterparts, and then apply your wildcards for the rest. This step is not as easy as it sounds, but with a diligent search, you are likely to be able to force a generously misspelled name in there.

6. Finally, and most importantly: Verification. Run the solution by a sensationalist media production crew, who will provide rigorous validation of your work and skillfully edited feedback from a panel of experts. After all, the number of correct solutions is surely limited to only a few dozen, at most, one would think. And, with a little luck, you, too, will soon join the rolls of those who have solved Z-340. Good luck!
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I agree. Craig Bauer has called himself into question in creating and standing behind such a cryptologically unsound proposed solution. As the editor in chief of a respected cryptologic journal, a defense of his methodology seems necessary. Whether this bogus claim of breaking Z340 was for 15 seconds of fame, money, or some other motivation, it seems he has risked his actual career as his credibility is now damaged.

There are 3 ciphers in the Z340…….to begin start with the 18 letters from the Z408 that were “unsolved” to find a clue…..BEFORE I ATTEMPT THE PIT TEMPEST….hinting at the Star Maps in the works of Shakespeare.

Then notice the -+- signs are segregated to a quadrant formation that is inside the ciphers. Then take the Dots alone and remove them in their layout. These are the Star Quadrants that hold the constellations Bootes, Serpens, and Hercules. See the word HER in the upper right hand corner?

[IMG]http://i67.tinypic.com/2cpt6v7.jpg[/IMG]

Then take the Ciphertext and remove it from the Symbols that are left. Place them both in a columnar layout in sequence but make sure that they both have one letter missing at the end as shown

[IMG]http://i68.tinypic.com/21eq43t.jpg[/IMG]

The Star Map is combined with the Phillips 66 Map to layout the circle, its center and its rotation as it related to true north…older books concealed hints to types of ciphers….

[IMG]http://i68.tinypic.com/50jy1v.jpg[/IMG]

The Ciphertext is then run through a Vigenere Tableau to derive the plaintext. But the shift is made in the tableau from the entry of a 26 letter phrase WE DONT FORGIVE WE DONT FORGET Z to create the strange patterns of a Homophonic Cipher.

[IMG]http://i67.tinypic.com/2u5c7xj.jpg[/IMG]

Now this is all strange as it reads like a stitching method by taking the Ciphertext and adding it to the Plaintext to form the final messages, which are very jumbled but clear as day IMO.

The following codebreaks of Layer Two of Kryptos are also made to reveal the actual agent and the location of his office in Vermont !!!

You should tell Ed Sheidt that he is a good liar…..show him this link to see what he says….I am not paying 50 bucks to be told I am wrong….lol

Dont forget after Kryptos was opened in view of the CIA only, there was a series of letters that were sent in called the Scorpion Ciphers. That letter specifically describes the ciphers in Kryptos and appeared no less than 9 months afterwards…

The agency was communicating with their agents in the past Zodiac Teams and were setting up the next series of Templates……

The leftover symbols of the Z340 are to be used to crack the Scorpion ciphers…

Why is everyone stuck on it being a homophonic cipher come hell or high water? This was just a ruse by the Zodiac and you guys have fallen for it for decades. The 340 is most likely a form of pictogram based on symmetrical, geometrical elements conforming to the placement of various symbols.

@Ian the way that he hid the cipher was in three parts that were mixed together in one page.

A Star Map from the dots…..and then a separation of the ciphertext symbols from the ciphertext letters

They are taken and run through a Vigenere Tableau that is shifted from a key phrase in the first line of the cipher.

The Zodiac then sent in the Bus Bomb Letter, saying that it was to be cracked in the same way as “the last cipher” meaning a Homophonic

There is no logical way to encrypt a Homophonic Cipher so it can be broken without a table or a chart…..in this case it is using a standard 26×26 tableau, with the alphabets of the individual lines being shifted according to the first letter position and the continuation of the alphabet from that point.

The outer alphabets are the standard A-Z and are used to guide the entry of the letters one at a time.